ANN ARBOR Nine hospitals in southeast Michigan have come together to form one of 25 regional stroke networks across the nation that will allow teams of researchers representing every medical specialty needed for stroke care to address the three prongs of stroke research: prevention, treatment and recovery.
The new Michigan StrokeNet and its counterpart networks were announced Dec. 13 by the National Institutes of Health. It is the only network in Michigan, and will seek to add additional Michigan hospitals over time.
Michigan StrokeNet will be coordinated by the University of Michigan Health Systems Stroke Program, and involves two U-M Health System hospitals, two from the Trinity Health system and five Detroit Medical Center hospitals. Dr. Philip Scott and Dr. Devin Brown of U-Ms Department of Emergency Medicine and Department of Neurology will serve as co-principal investigators.
The new system is intended to streamline stroke research, by centralizing approval and review, lessening time and costs of clinical trials, and assembling a comprehensive data sharing system, said Dr. Petra Kaufmann, the associate director for clinical research at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).
NINDS, which will fund and manage the NIH Stroke Trials Network, or NIH StrokeNet, has a strong history of successful stroke clinical trials over the past 40 years, leading to some astonishing advances in treatment and prevention of the disease, including the first treatment for acute stroke, announced in 1995.
The 25 networks are strategically placed in every region of the country. All have experience in stroke research and recruitment, including the ability to enroll underrepresented populations, and were required to offer access to the full cadre of specialties that are involved in stroke care. These include: emergency medicine, neurosurgery, interventional neuroradiology, vascular neurology, neurointensive care, neuroimaging, stroke rehabilitation and pediatric neurology. Each network will receive infrastructure funding for research and education support, with $50,000 per year allocated to train the next generation of stroke clinical researchers.
U-M is already the home of the national clinical coordinating center of the NIH-funded Neurological Emergencies Treatment Trials network, which coordinates studies on the emergency care of a range of brain-related issues.
The nine participants in Michigan StrokeNet are:
University Hospital (U-M Health System), Ann Arbor
Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, Ann Arbor Continued...
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ANN ARBOR: Michigan hospitals form new network to help revolutionize stroke clinical research